Paper Máché Owl - Part 18- Painting Progress

 I wanted to get the paint on the feet before I painted the bird.  I did not want to be dropping a different color paint on top of feathers that had been painted.  In fact, I have painted the feet four times to get something I think I can live with.  The pictures of great horned owls that I have been looking at show that their feet are a yellowish brown color. That color was hard to match.  And then, I ended up with a contrast problem once I did start painting the feathers.

The first time I painted the owl's feet, it seemed close to what I wanted, but needed a second coat because the paint did not cover well.  I painted a second coat, and thought all was well.  Then, once I started painting the feathers, the color of the feet did not look right.  So, it was back to the feet once again.  I think I can live with this color.  In the long run, if the feet still look off, I am going to take some artistic license and paint them gray/brown as some other owls feet look.

I am about 10 hours in on painting the owl.  The painting is somewhat labor intensive.  Each feather is painted individually.  On the belly and breast of the owl each owl has three brown streaks and two streaks that are white(ish).  I tap in the three brown streaks (raw and burnt sienna and white) and then come back in with white and tap against the brown edges to create an off-white color.  

I will say that this part of the owl is not finished.  I will next go back in and tap in some areas of dark and light color to break up the pattern a little bit.  That was always the plan, but when I was taking some pictures for this post, I noticed that the pattern was a little bit too uniform.   I did not realize that sooner because I was focusing on one feather at a time and trying to paint a jagged chevron shape.  Because I did not step back and take a look while I was painting, I just did not see how the chevrons evenly the chevrons were lining up.  

After taking the pictures, I went back and over painted some of those linear patterns to break it up a bit.  Now I am thinking that maybe that was a bit too much of the brown color.  However,  I can correct that if necessary while I paint on some more of the patterns for that area.  I have not taken any new photos since then.  

It is going to take a while to get this bird painted.  I will keep blogging about my progress.  Check back next Tuesday.  I will try to have the post up earlier.  I try to get it set up and ready to publish early Tuesday mornings, but this time it did not work out.  At least it is up on Tuesday.

Paper Mâché Owl - Part 17- The Painting Begins

I am back from a vacation, and I have just caught up things enough at home that I have time to sit down and paint.  But before starting to paint, I had to experiment with paint colors, strokes, and color combinations to determine how best to paint the owl.

I began by coating a piece of cardboard with two layers of gesso.  I drew a few rough feather shapes on it and started trying different colors and patterns for the feathers.  I stopped to take a picture during this phase.  I did more testing after that, but I wanted to make sure I snapped at least one picture of the tests.  Sometimes I get too busy and work to the last minute and forget to take a picture.  

 I needed to experiment a little more on just how I wanted the feathers to look.  I spent some time on the internet looking at images of owls.  It was surprising just how individual the feathers of owls are.  It made me feel better to think with that much individuation that I was not going to be doing it "wrong".

After I decided what color combinations I wanted to use, I started painting the owl on the underside of the feathers of the tail.  That area is the least likely to be seen when the bird is standing upright.  This gave me a little time to determine where the colors should be placed and how to create the striated pattern before it made it up to the more visible areas of the owl.  

I settled on a mixture of 5 parts Burnt Sienna, 4 parts Raw Sienna, and two parts Titanium White for my color pallet for the brown portion of the feathers.  The lighter part of the feathers is straight Titanium White.  (I had originally tried a mixture of Raw Sienna and Titanium White, but it kept coming out more of a pink color than I cared to use.)  It was important for me to have a formula as it will take quite a few days to paint the owl and I needed to be able to reproduce the color mixture over multiple days.  

The next thing I had to consider was texture.  I felt that if I just painted it flatly, it would not look as much like real feathers.  I decided that even though I was using acrylics that I would use inexpensive oil and enamel paint brushes.  I don't know where or how I ended up with these brushes.  I think I may have purchased them by accident when I went to look for some cheap child watercolor brushes.  I use them for applying glue sometimes.  Anyway, here were these paintbrushes with stiff plastic bristles and they seemed just what I needed at the moment.  I have been using these brushed to dab on the paint.

For each feather, I would tap the paintbrush into the brown mixture and tap on some of the paint in four uneven stripes across the feather.  Then I would wipe out the brush and tap in some of the plain white on the rest of the figure.  The white would mix a little bit with the brown in these areas to form a lighter brown color.  Once all the paint had been tapped in on the feather, I would brush upward with a very light stroke.  The stiff bristles would smear the paint and make it look less like distinct bands of color.  Sometimes, if I had added too much white, I would go back and tap in a little more brown paint.

After a feather was painted, I used a small pick tool (think dental instrument) and scratched in a few lines.  The lines helped give the feather the illusion of more texture.  It also visually broke up the bands of color. All in all, I think it makes the feather look a little more dimensional.

I am actually a little further along than is shown in the picture above.  This was my first stopping point.  Since then, I have given the owl's feet a first coat of paint and completed two more rows of the feathers.  Since each feather is treated individually, it takes a few minutes to paint each one.  

I will be working on the underside of the bird this week.  The challenge is going to come when I get to the smaller feathers of the head and legs.  I will have to do a little more experimenting for those parts.  The head is not the same color as the body.  However, the paint will have to coordinate with what has previously been painted.

Check back next Tuesday to see the next update on this project.